In hospitals and other health care environments, it is often necessary to continually collect and analyze a variety of medical data from a patient. These data may include electrocardiogram, temperature, blood pressure, respiration, pulse and other parameters.
Monitoring systems in the related art have typically fallen into one of two general categories: multi-function monitoring, recording and displaying systems which process and collect all of the data desired, but are bulky and difficult to transport; and small, portable systems which are easy to transport, but process and collect fewer types of data and have limited storage capability. Initially (e.g., in an ambulance or an emergency room) a patient is connected to a simple, portable monitor to observe a limited number of medical attributes, such as EKG or non-invasive blood pressure. As the patient moves to higher care facilities (e.g., an intensive care unit or operating room) it is desirable to augment these simple monitors to observe additional parameters. Generally, this is accomplished by disconnecting the patient from the simple monitor and connecting the patient to a monitoring system having more robust capabilities.
The need for continuity of data collection and display is most pressing in emergency situations. During an emergency, the speed at which a patient is transferred from a bed to an operating room or intensive care unit may substantially impact the patient's chance of survival. It is important to provide the same level of monitoring in transport as at the stationary bedside. It is desirable from a clinical point of view to provide a continuous monitoring capability and data history availability which follow the patient.
Two major considerations in the design of transport monitoring systems have been ease and speed of system reconfiguration. It is undesirable to disconnect the patient from a set of sensors coupled to a fixed location monitoring system and attach a new set of sensors coupled to a portable monitor immediately prior to transportation or administration of critical procedures. It is equally undesirable to disconnect each sensor from a fixed location monitoring system and reconnect the individual sensors to a portable monitoring system for transport.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,715,385 and 4,895,385 to Cudahy et al. discuss a monitoring system which includes a fixed location display unit and a portable display unit. A digital acquisition and processing module (DAPM) receives data from sensors attached to the patient and provides the data to either or both of the fixed and portable display units. Normally, the DAPM is inserted into a bedside display unit located near the patient's bed. When it is necessary to reconfigure the system for transporting the patient, the DAPM is connected to the portable display and then disconnected from the bedside display. The DAPM remains attached to the patient during this reconfiguration step and during patient transport, eliminating the need to reconnect the patient to intrusive devices. Once the DAPM is disconnected from the bedside display, a transportable, monitoring system is formed, comprising the portable display and DAPM.
A feature of the DAPM which may be undesirable is the need to connect cables between the DAPM and the transportable monitor to provide continuous monitoring during transport. In a life threatening situation, any time spent performing equipment configuring steps (such as connecting cables) to prepare the monitoring system for transport may impact the patient's chance for survival.
Another feature of the DAPM which may be undesirable is the need to have at least two displays (a portable monitor and a fixed display) if both portable operations and coupling to room related services are desired. The DAPM is connected to the patient to receive data. It is connected to the portable monitor during transport of the patient. In order to couple the patient data source to a power source or electronics in the patient's room or to a communications network, the DAPM must be inserted into the fixed display for coupling with any equipment fixed in the room (e.g., a hardcopy output device or an outside network. If there is no fixed display or if the fixed display is already in use, the DAPM cannot be connected to an external network. The configuration (portable display and DAPM) used while transporting the patient cannot connect directly to room related services.
Additional simplification of the steps performed to reconfigure the system is desirable, in order to reduce the time to prepare the patient and monitoring system for transport to an operating room or intensive care unit.